Design Hub Menu

I’m often asked about the value of the IoT — sometimes
directly, but often indirectly, as in “How can a deluge of data create
value?”

Let’s look at an example of electric motors in industrial
environments and the ways the IoT produces some real value, perhaps in some
ways you hadn’t considered.

Electric motors: The workhorses of
industrial life

Electric motors come in all sizes, from very small to very
large. They usually run on main power, but sometimes on batteries, like in
electric cars. We all have many electric motors in our homes — in our
vacuum cleaners, fridges, freezers, garage door openers. And, of course, many
toys have miniature electric motors, like the locomotives in model trains.

Factories are also equipped with many electric motors used for all kinds of
jobs: lifting, pressing, pumping, sucking or drying — basically
everything that can be done with motion. Electric motors are the workhorses of
industry today. They’re also used in areas that are too dusty, dangerous
or difficult to reach by human effort. In short, modern industrial life
doesn’t exist without the electric motor.

Maintenance, maintenance,
maintenance

Electric motors are mechanical devices, so it’s no surprise that they
go down occasionally. Statistics show a failure rate of 7% per year; on
average, an electric motor stops working once every 14 years. Not bad, you
might think — but for a factory with a hundred electric motors, that
means one motor is down just about every month. And keep in mind that one
motor going down sometimes means a whole production line going down, which can
become very expensive, very quickly. Now factor in the reality that motor
failures can come with incredibly unfortunate timing, like just before that
critical order has to be delivered.

To reduce unexpected downtime, factories employ maintenance
crews. Maintenance of electric motors is an important part of their efforts,
but it’s also expensive. There are several approaches to
maintenance:

Preventive maintenance. Maintenance schedules are based
on an estimate of how long the average electric motor runs. To be on the safe
side and avoid complete motor failure, maintenance usually occurs too early
(although occasionally too late), and well-functioning parts still in good
condition may be replaced. The catch? There’s no guarantee that a new
problem won’t occur shortly after maintenance takes place.

“Run-to-failure” maintenance. This approach
waits to do maintenance until the machine stops working. This typically
results in full motor replacement, because repairing a rundown electric motor
on the spot usually isn’t simple.

Condition-based maintenance. Before electric motors go
down, they generally start to show irregularities like noise, imbalance,
drag, etc. In a condition-based approach, a maintenance specialist goes to
every electric motor and “listens” to it with the appropriate
tools, much like a doctor with a stethoscope. Depending on the environment,
this may be an easy job or a difficult and even a dangerous one. And, of
course, the doctor can't be everywhere at once.

Despite its drawbacks, preventative maintenance is probably better and more
cost-effective than the “run-to-failure” alternative — but
condition-based may be a better option … especially when you bring in
the IoT.

Condition-based maintenance: Made
stronger with AI and IoT

With the IoT, every electric motor on a factory floor is equipped with one
or multiple sensors that are connected (preferably wirelessly) to a control
database that continuously collects data about the motors. The control
database can use artificial intelligence (AI) to learn normal behavior for
every motor and then, after a typically short period of learning, it can
generate immediate alerts when deviations from that normal occur. In other
words, the IoT combined with AI not only sees problems coming, it continuously
scans for problems.

Keep in mind that this control database doesn’t need to
be programmed. It can simply be fed with data and then learns by itself
“automatically” what is normal and what are exceptions. When an
exception (i.e., a problem) occurs, it sends an immediate alert, which in many
cases avoids total motor failure and replacement. This kind of smart alert
also allows the treatment to match the problem at the moment it starts to
manifest, rather than general maintenance that may be too early, too late or
miss the pending failure completely. Depending on the severity of the problem
and alert, the motor’s downtime can even be planned to minimize any
disruption to operations.

Finally, this kind of sensor-based data collection is far more precise and
thorough than anything humans could achieve. A slow deterioration of the
quality of any given electric motor will continue undetected by human eyes and
ears until a serious problem develops or failure occurs, but the IoT will
notice even the smallest shifts in normal performance over a longer period of
time.

The true value of the IoT: Making
better decisions faster

We think we live in a modern world, but we actually waste a lot of
resources and money by making the wrong decisions and/or making decisions too
slowly. The promise of the IoT is that we can now collect enough data —
cost-effective data that already exists, but that we never captured. And we
can capture this data continuously, and quite effortlessly, in enormous
volumes. With AI, we can learn from it to make better
decisions, faster.

Back to the original question, then. What value does the IoT bring? It
enables people to make better decisions, faster.

Did you miss the other posts in our IoT
series? Catch up on all of them:

Have another topic that you would like Qorvo experts to cover? Email your
suggestions to the Qorvo Blog team and it
could be featured in an upcoming post.

About the Author

Cees LinksGeneral Manager, Wireless Connectivity Business Unit

Cees Links (pronounced "Case") was the founder and CEO of GreenPeak Technologies, acquired by Qorvo in 2016.
He is a pioneer of the wireless data industry, a visionary leader bringing the world of mobile computing and continuous networking together. In 2017, he was honored as a Wi-Fi pioneer with the Golden Mousetrap Lifetime Achievement Award by Design News.

The Impact of the IoT Demystified

Explore how the Internet of Things will affect society, from jobs to artificial intelligence and more.